A Buck And Wing Confession

by David Lewitzky

It has to do with minstrel shows and Jump Jim Crow, slavery tyrannical, endings and

beginnings, and Doctor Feelgood watermelon tropics sleepy time nostalgia, it has to

do with keep them in their place and comfort zones and fictions and

inventions.

It has to do with Ole Zip Coon and turkeys in the straw and niggers in the wood shed, it

has to do with me, my mind’s a magic mirror, reveals my darker nature, what’s

mine is mine, hold on there sunshine, hold on to sunny days, hold on to what I got

It has somehow to do with nation building, arrows, bullets, railroad tracks, with Uncle

Remus Uncle Tom, with conscience, shame and rage, with blackies quaint and

picturesque and stupid, with free trade, King Cotton and exhaustion, with magnolia

mint julep official history, with mandrake nightshade secret history

It has to do with family and location, my life and times, my Judeo-Christian Eastern

European ways, it has to do with holocaust and massacre atrocities in never-ending

repetition, it has to do with me, my place, my foothold in the world, my sense of

who I am

It has to do with irony and whites in blackface, and bitter blacks in blackface, with

dancers dying young of overwork and dope and drunkenness, it has to do with

King ‘Rastus’ Brown (who’s real name was George): Mister Buck and Wing,

dancing in obscurity, and Master Juba, dead at 27, and the beautiful consumptive

Florence Mills, dead at 31, and it has to do with Billie Holiday, blacklisted in

Manhattan, and with Bojangles dancing into legend, dancing on and on

It has to do with me, ‘struttin with some barbecue’, my secret dreams of sex and

mastery, my dreams of jazz and being hip, being Mister Cool, my constant dream

of life inside the privileged inner circle, and it has to do with me, my betrayals and

denials: I wasn’t there, I wasn’t born yet, and even if I was, so what—

it has to do with me and the memory of my youth, and my bitter age and

solitude, and the dreadful question of responsibility; it has to do with me, and

all the unacknowledged shades and shadows of my life.

About the Author

As a young man, David Lewitzky studied with Charles Olson, whom he considers to be his “spirit father.” As a seventy-one year old retired social worker/family therapist, Lewitzky only recently resumed writing poetry after thirty-five years of silence—a span he calls a “purgatorial gap for sure.” His work has appeared in Nimrod, Red Wheelbarrow, River Oak Review and Mochila Review among others. "A Buck And Wing Confession" is from a book-length work in progress entitled Dream of Myself as the Non-Stop Dancing Master. Lewitzky is a resident of backwoods Buffalo, NY.

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creative nonfiction, poetry, and mixed media artwork wander the paths of human experience. A nonprofit literary journal conceived
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